Beamer wrote on Feb 14, 2013, 07:49:There's a book, The Race to a New Game Machine, that is pretty interesting, going into detail about how much time and effort Sony and IBM put into designing the Cell, and then Microsoft called the same team at IBM and said "hey, we'd like that, but less weird." The Xbox chip is largely based on the Cell, only toned down to be symmetrical and more like a regular PowerPC chip. It was a smarter decision, but only possible because years were spent designing the Cell just for the PS3 (and other things that never happened.)

I never knew that, interesting. I thought they were radically different chips. In any case, the Cell was a basically a huge flop, so hopefully they've learned their lesson this time around.

Creston wrote on Feb 14, 2013, 01:15:Speaking of PS2 emulators, can someone recommend a good one? Been thinking about playing some of my old FF games, and my PS2 bought the bucket a year or so ago. Do those emulators allow any form of saving at all?Creston

I use PCSX2, it works well in the games I tried and supports saving. Playing FFXII at 1080p with proper AA is quite nice

Thank you, kind sir! Edit : Does anyone have the PS2 BIOS files available anywhere? I can't get them from my old PS2, because it kicked the bucket...

Creston wrote on Feb 14, 2013, 01:15:Speaking of PS2 emulators, can someone recommend a good one? Been thinking about playing some of my old FF games, and my PS2 bought the bucket a year or so ago. Do those emulators allow any form of saving at all?Creston

I use PCSX2, it works well in the games I tried and supports saving. Playing FFXII at 1080p with proper AA is quite nice

Creston wrote on Feb 14, 2013, 01:15:Speaking of PS2 emulators, can someone recommend a good one? Been thinking about playing some of my old FF games, and my PS2 bought the bucket a year or so ago. Do those emulators allow any form of saving at all?Creston

I use PCSX2, it works well in the games I tried and supports saving. Playing FFXII at 1080p with proper AA is quite nice

Beamer wrote on Feb 13, 2013, 23:26:It's not a Windows machine. It's not even x86. It's running a custom IBM PowerPC chip based off of some of the innovations IBM put into the Cell.

Yeah, I thought it was a normal 3 core chip they'd put in, but I guess not. So much for (likely) backwards compatibility...

Speaking of PS2 emulators, can someone recommend a good one? Been thinking about playing some of my old FF games, and my PS2 bought the bucket a year or so ago. Do those emulators allow any form of saving at all?

Creston

There's a book, The Race to a New Game Machine, that is pretty interesting, going into detail about how much time and effort Sony and IBM put into designing the Cell, and then Microsoft called the same team at IBM and said "hey, we'd like that, but less weird." The Xbox chip is largely based on the Cell, only toned down to be symmetrical and more like a regular PowerPC chip. It was a smarter decision, but only possible because years were spent designing the Cell just for the PS3 (and other things that never happened.)

Beamer wrote on Feb 13, 2013, 23:26:It's not a Windows machine. It's not even x86. It's running a custom IBM PowerPC chip based off of some of the innovations IBM put into the Cell.

Yeah, I thought it was a normal 3 core chip they'd put in, but I guess not. So much for (likely) backwards compatibility...

Speaking of PS2 emulators, can someone recommend a good one? Been thinking about playing some of my old FF games, and my PS2 bought the bucket a year or so ago. Do those emulators allow any form of saving at all?

Heck, that's almost exactly what it was for the PS3 - in order to have backwards compatibility they basically had to put an entire PS2 inside the PS3.

Or do it with software like the myriad emulators available on PC do. If a bunch of internet nobodies can turn my PC into a PS2 and a Wii I'm sure Sony and Nintendo could pull off something similar...

Nooo, impossible! Emulators are so hard, it takes a band of swedish and czech hackers a year to come up with something but the minds of the people who made the fucking hardware can't do it! Sooo expensive!!!

Beamer wrote on Feb 13, 2013, 09:58:Backwards compatibility is just to boost initial sales, though. It tends to be very expensive, and that just means you're either paying more for something you'll use 8-12 months or, worse, getting less power in exchange for a feature you'll only use for 8-12 months.

I own a 360 and PS3. I do not need their capabilities in a new system. It's not like the old ones will magically stop working, though within a few months (8-12 is an overestimation for me, personally) they'll seem antiquated and going back to them will be painful.

By this point almost everyone owns a PS3 and/or 360. Yeah, some will trade them in for a new system, but for many backwards compatibility is something that makes them feel better about a system even if it isn't much used. It gets them to buy something either overpriced or inferior. It's a ripoff.

Which would be ok, if my PS3 wasn't dead and I wasn't on my 2nd xbox 360. My Genesis, ps2, and NES still work everytime I turn them on.....

Nintendo is being crucified over their downloadable backwards compatibility.

Importantly, too, they've always tied purchases to machines. Microsoft and Sony always tied them to accounts. I think that's a clear indication of where they're going.

At the same time, I'm guessing that the publishers have some say, too. So Carcassone may be tied to your account, but if Sierra (ha!) doesn't want you to have it on a new system they may have the right to stop it

Only one game is multisystem right now, I think, being available for WP8, Windows 8 and Xbox, with the ability to pick up and leave off interchangeably. But, stupidly, you have to buy it 3 times. Eh, maybe not stupidly, as I think it may be 3 different versions. I think future games won't be that way. I mean, it's a poker game, it doesn't need more juice than what a 922 has.

xXBatmanXx wrote on Feb 13, 2013, 09:56:for all the old games that are no longer "supported" that they want us all to REBUY for the 4-5th time in their new download service.

Still seems to work great for Nintendo. I hear Starfox for the Wii-U should be out next year!

I wonder about backward compatibility. It would seem smart to put it in, but they already killed it with the 360 and PS3 (albeit AFTER launch), so I doubt they'll spend much money on getting it to work this time. The Playstation, especially, would very likely never work, as the architecture is entirely different.

The 360 to 720 might still be feasible since it seems fairly similar on paper.

Every single time I load a game I have to choose which storage device I want to pick, and it takes a few seconds to determine how much storage is available in the cloud prior to even letting me (meaning I mash A a few times before it acknowledges.)

I'm not 100% certain the better solution here. Remembering where I stored last time and making me choose to change, instead of asking every single time, is probably it. Having it automatically determine which of those has the most recent content for that particular game is a better solution, but it would still require that lag of checking the cloud at some point, probably while loading the dashboard, which already takes too long.

Actually, his comment about possibly losing unsaved content is true, too. It can't be too hard to have games set a flag for whether there have been any material changes to a save. Eh, maybe not. Thinking to a game with checkpoints, it's warning you that anything since the last isn't saved. And, in a game like SR3, is time material? Bullet count? I'd say no, but maybe some disagree.

And I don't know if they'll sell as well as this generation. Has anyone seen the reports from the Toy Fair? 95% of the stuff there hooks up to iPads, and some of it actually does really, really cool things.